Greenwich and the Prime Meridian!

Since our supervisor/advisor/facilitator has been here, our trips have been a bit more frequent. On Friday, we took the short trip over to Greenwich on the tube. Greenwich is famous worldwide for being the site of the Royal Observatory, which played a major role in astronomy and navigation. It was here that the discovery of an accurate way for ships to determine their longitude was developed, and here that the Prime Meridian was placed as the 0 degrees longitude mark. This also means that it is from this point of Greenwich Mean Time that all of the world's time zones are in reference to (for instance, Eastern Standard Time is defined as being GMT+5).

Official 24 hour clock of GMT

Left: East Longitude, Right: West Longitude

Bronze line is the Prime Meridian!

Love that spans both hemispheres! (The bronze line is the Meridian)

However, it also plays home to the old Royal Naval College, one of the most modern works of architecture of it's time. Designed by Christopher Wren, it displays some of his trademark work, including the different styles of columns, the pediment over doorways, and the same style of dome as he used on St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Greenwich also plays home to one of the first homes in the style that would come to be known in the Americas as "Colonial" with a centered front door and symmetrical windows, a building that also housed England's first floating spiral staircase, the Tulip Stair.

Royal Naval College

Painted Hall at the Royal Naval College

Tulip Stair at the Queen's House

Greenwich is a very cool, very historic part of the city, and I was yet again impressed by the amount of history crammed into such a small geographic space. Not only were there the navigational achievements which made the British Empire possible (without the ability to calculate longitude, the British Empire would never have expanded as effectively as it did), but there were the architectural achievements which have shaped the design of buildings around the world. I would have loved to have gone into the Royal Observatory, but there wasn't enough time on this day, and it's an easy enough trip to make again.